Arnolfini Project 'By Two Degrees' - Environmental Perspectives and Collaboration

Market Audit

In light of growing public concern with the climate crisis, Arnolfini launches a series of exhibitions, talks, screenings, and workshops which communicate a range of environmental perspectives. The project “by two degrees” will be held in collaboration with ‘Create Centre & Ecohome’. The novelty of this work and growing brand equity aim to encourage the ACE to re-include Arnolfini in its National Portfolio. To invest effectively into a marketing strategy, Arnolfini needs to determine the kind of value which will be created for specific market segments and the value these segments will return to the gallery.

Market audit

Environmental factors following the PEST framework are outside Arnolfini’s range of influence but affect the company’s success nonetheless (Hill, O’Sullivan & O’Sullivan 2003, p.281):

Politico-Legal

i. In 2019, the UK Parliament declared an environment and climate emergency (Corbyn 2019).

ii. Bristol’s city council’s culture strategy aims to make Bristol a city of “openness”, “imagination”, and “originality”, ensuring equality and inclusion, collaboration, cultural learning and expression (Bristol City Council 2017, pp.14,25).

iii. The Charities Act 2011 defines a charity as an institution that exists for charitable purposes and is under jurisdiction of the High Court. The Charities Act sets out legal framework for CIOs and implies that CIOs:

a. benefit from limited liability protection

b. benefit from separate legal personality

c. are not subjected to company law (Farrer & Co 2018, pp.3,6)

Economic

i. National austerity politics have resulted in considerable cuts to arts funding (Harvey 2016).

ii. The national benefit freeze is to end in 2020, resulting in a benefit growth by 1.7% (BBC 2019).

iii. The national unemployment rate (16 years and older) has decreased to 3,9% (Office for National Statistics 2019a).

Socio-Cultural

i. Concern for the environment is at record high in the UK: in June 2019, a quarter of UK population states environment as third most important issue facing the nation (see Appendix 2). “Climate emergency” was declared word of the year 2019 (Zhou 2019).

ii. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport’s Taking Part Survey (DCMS 2019) has found that in the last 12 months, 63% of adults engaged with the arts three or more times (see Appendix 3).

iii. Contemporary society is becoming increasingly multicultural: From 2001 to 2011, the percentage of White British inhabitants decreased from 87.4% to 80.5% (see Appendix 4). Asian ethnic groups were the second largest group, followed by Black ethnic groups (Office for National Statistics 2019b). Arts engagement in 2018 was highest among those of mixed ethnicity (DCMS 2019, p.10).

Technological

i. Time spent online: An Ofcom survey from 2018 shows that 1/5 of UK population with access to the internet spend more than 40 hours/week online: 23.8% of adults report to have visited an arts website or app in the last 12 months (DCMS 2019, p.5).

The SOAR framework dynamically analyses what an organisation is doing well and which aspects it may improve to satisfy important stakeholders’ demands (Stavros & Cole 2013; Stavros, Cole & Hitchcock 2014):